reflection essay about pandemic

• < Previous

Home > History Community Special Collections > Remembering COVID-19 Community Archive > Community Reflections > 21

Community Reflections

My life experience during the covid-19 pandemic.

Melissa Blanco Follow

Document Type

Class Assignment

Publication Date

Affiliation with sacred heart university.

Undergraduate, Class of 2024

My content explains what my life was like during the last seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it affected my life both positively and negatively. It also explains what it was like when I graduated from High School and how I want the future generations to remember the Class of 2020.

Class assignment, Western Civilization (Dr. Marino).

Recommended Citation

Blanco, Melissa, "My Life Experience During the Covid-19 Pandemic" (2020). Community Reflections . 21. https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/covid19-reflections/21

Creative Commons License

Since September 23, 2020

Included in

Higher Education Commons , Virus Diseases Commons

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Expert Gallery
• Collections
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• SelectedWorks Faculty Guidelines
• DigitalCommons@SHU: Nuts & Bolts, Policies & Procedures
• Sacred Heart University Library

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Reflecting on COVID-19: A year in the pandemic life

It was about one year ago that the coronavirus pandemic brought day-to-day life on campus to a halt and most UCLA students, staff and faculty began a primarily at-home existence.

While isolation at home was the biggest challenge for some, others grappled with how to find enough physical and mental space to handle a full-time job while caring for and homeschooling children. Some empty nesters welcomed back college-aged children. People around the world faced anxieties about their own health, the health of loved ones and business shutdowns. Social engagements were abandoned and Zoom happy hours, Netflix, cooking, knitting, writing and board games filled people’s time. Many participated in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police brutality and murder, while others read or watched them on the news.

Below a few Bruins share some of their thoughts and feelings about how the pandemic has affected them.

Natalie Masuoka, associate professor of Asian American studies and political science

The moment that I knew this was serious was the moment that my daughter’s daycare on campus said we have to pick up the kids. Safer-in-place policies suddenly went into effect and we were directed to pick up our kids because schools were closing. That was the true moment that has provided the framework for my responses for the pandemic — how this is impacting our families and our deep personal connections?

As a specialist on communities of color — African American, Latino, Asian American — we are seeing the racial disparities. Certain people have been disproportionately affected. As a mother, we realize gender plays a role in who has been disproportionately affected. Many of our students have been disproportionately impacted because their homes did not offer a suitable environment for learning.

A year later people are anxious to return back to normal, but it will be more complex than being able to not wear a mask. The more that I’m sitting in conversations, the more that we talk to different faculty, staff and students — everyone has different concerns, and different things to take into account. The variation is astonishingly diverse, so thinking about the return to normalcy is definitely going to be a challenge. In the same way that going to the safer at home was in many ways a complex process, the call to go back to normal, to get the economy back to normal, is really a simplistic view. We have a lot of difficult considerations to take into account in the return back.

Tria Blu Wakpa, assistant professor of world arts and culture/dance

Spring was an exceedingly challenging time because it wasn’t only the COVID-19 context, but it was the murder of George Floyd. A lot of the students in my classes were out there in the streets protesting for social justice. In week nine or 10, one of the students turned on the camera and said, “The National Guard is right outside my window. I can’t do this, I can’t turn in my final paper.” There have been a lot of challenges for students. The university has encouraged us to consider the immense challenges that people are going through: loss of income, death, financial instability, George Floyd, the election, inauguration. Accessing stable wi-fi is a challenge, and navigating multiple things and levels of inequity, professors have to be aware of that and very understanding of that.

A year later, I am teaching “Dance 44, World Dance Histories,” a general ed course, where I have mostly undergraduate lower division students, a cohort of dance students, and students from all across campus majoring in the sciences. To me it feels like those underlying challenges are still there, it also feels like students are more comfortable in online learning, and I’m more comfortable in online learning. The remote environment has challenged students to make dances on screens, learn how to edit, think about close ups of different parts of the body. In “Dance 45, Introduction to Dance Studies,” students used to make these dances in groups in person, but now maybe someone does a solo, splits the screen, now there are people dancing in two or more places, students are really considering the screen dance component and utilizing Instagram in very different ways for them to work. Now, for the first time, many students have videos of the dances that they showed in class, which they can circulate and watch for years to come. We’ve also been able to bring presenters to the university without having to pay for expenses, and reducing our carbon footprint.

I share with my students, sometimes it can be useful when you’re making a list of everything that’s going wrong, to also make a list of everything going right.

Jacob Schmidt, professor of bioengineering and director of the Boelter Hall Makerspace

A year ago, when everything shut down, there was a big sense of urgency to make face shields and prototype other medical equipment. There was a lot of purpose associated with that. Despite campus being closed I was still busy working at UCLA on various PPE projects; I was pretty tired going home. It was not until the demand for our materials went away that it hit me.

Now I’m on campus, interacting with students only over Zoom. No one is in the office, and there hasn’t been anyone here for 12 months. I look out at campus and it is empty, almost post-apocalyptic. At home, we have all tried to be good soldiers, wearing masks, going grocery shopping only once a week and buying 50-pound bags of flour and making it last as long as possible.

I don’t know if at the one-year retrospective we should be giving each other high-fives because we’ve made it through the year, or if this is year N of many. I want it to be high-fives, summertime is coming, and we’ll be back to normal. But that’s how we felt six months ago after passing a big peak in cases — that life will come back to normal, and it did not. We still don’t know if the vaccines will work against all strains, or even if getting COVID prevents you from getting COVID again. Fatigue has hit.

Through all of this the makerspace has basically been closed, but I’m really looking forward to opening in the fall!

Pamela Hieronymi, professor of philosophy

At first, I didn’t fully appreciate all that was happening, but after a few weeks, I remember walking down the street and realizing there was no normal to go back to. At first I thought this would be a perturbation of life, something temporary, like a bad snow storm. And then I realized, no, things are never going to go back to normal. It seemed to me that a chunk of what was difficult was grieving lots of losses, and not knowing which ones they were, knowing things weren’t going to go back, but not knowing which things. Mundane examples, like which of my favorite local bars or coffee shops were going to be around? All the way to who will survive this? Which people will we lose? Is my mother going to survive this? Will education be forever cheapened by the possibility of using technology as a substitute for teaching? Not to say technology is bad, but there is the temptation to scale, and I don’t think it scales very well. Friends moved out of the area, everything was thrown in the air, and I was not sure what was going to come back down.

Now it seems like we may be seeing light at end of the tunnel. The worst-case scenarios could flare back up. We’ve lost a ton, but we can start to project a little bit what is going to stay standing, and what is going to come back. In-person education is going to remain an important part of our lives. The street I live next to has lost a bunch of businesses, but a bunch have survived. My mother is now vaccinated. When I was expressing the exhaustion during week eight of this quarter, a student put in the chat “My brain is a baked potato.” I said, “I hear you.” I thought it was a very nice way of expressing the feeling. The students have been amazing, they have a sense of solidarity, that we’re in this, and we’re making the best of this.”

Renee Romero, science librarian

I had taken Friday, March 13, off to be a bridesmaid at my friend’s wedding that weekend, and I was getting updates from coworkers like, “We think this is serious. We think we are not coming back.” Others at the wedding were saying that this might be the last wedding we attend in 2020. I wasn’t continually checking my email, so I did end up going to work on that Monday. I remember suddenly getting a message like, “Hey, if you’re at work, get your stuff and go home.” We thought it might be two weeks, but I realized anything might happen. Then it was surreal, because it was happening, and it was happening now. I went to spend time with my family outside the L.A. area. I kept my apartment in L.A. for three months, but then let it go. If there is one word to sum up everything, it was that there was “uncertainty.”

A year later, I’m just thankful. I’m glad that I’m in a work environment that allows flexibility. Amidst all the uncertainty and not knowing what the world is going to look like, I had a good environment to go through this. We were able to say we would put workers first, put everyone in a safe situation, keep people as informed as possible. We are very blessed and lucky. There is still uncertainty, but there has been a feeling of stability underneath. Not everyone can say that during this past year.

Brian Wood, assistant professor of anthropology

This struck me early on as one of the disease scenarios that people had been describing, as a life-changing, society-changing and culture-changing moment, that none of us were really prepared for. I’ve just been fearful and worried and have been wondering when it will all be over, and how we are coming out the other side, as a society. My particular situation was made even worse by my wife’s cancer diagnosis. It’s been the worst year of our lives, dealing with threats internally, and externally, on both sides of the equation, on a molecular and on a societal level. These existential threats have brought my family closer, and we’ve gotten to know others going through hardships.

On a personal level, in the early stages of all this, we were in a crisis traumatic situation. The whole society was breaking down, and there was no leadership, and I feel like all those things now are all headed in the right direction. I’ve stopped having nightmares. I feel like the kids have settled in. We’ve taught ourselves how to be teachers, organized our family in a different way. It’s almost like when as an anthropologist, I’ve done fieldwork for many months, landed in a foreign country, and after six to seven months you start to settle in.

The United States has transformed into another culture and another place, and we’ve been able to acclimate. I see very good signs, of a social rebirth, of appreciating things that we took for granted, reevaluated in the new world. I’m excited to think about how society would be remade and reborn given extreme situations, living through periods of rapid change.

I have shifted my academic work to include research focused on pandemic preparedness, and I am currently advising the National Science Foundation on how to foster more interdisciplinary work in this area. So this time has impacted my thinking, life, planning and career. In general, it’s a mixed feeling. The things that brought about the pandemic are not going to go away. All of the underlying processes — land conversion, low-cost and rapid transportation, the global flow of people, contacts between humans and nonhuman species that create spillover. None of that is going away.

Nurit Katz, chief sustainability officer

I remember being very shocked. Having been on our vibrant campus for more than a decade, it was hard to imagine anything that would make the university stand still and it was weird to imagine the campus going quiet. During the initial pandemic response, I served as operations section chief for the Emergency Operations Center and we worked together to determine how to operate the campus, what kind of signage was needed, distancing for essential workers, essential meals for staff on campus, how to track who was where on campus. Now, one year later, we’ve been successful in many of the efforts and we have a new challenge — people coming back in the fall. The COVID-19 Response and Recovery Task Force is now leading those efforts and it will take a lot of months of work to bring people back for in person learning and working.

Emotionally, I’m grateful to be here. I ended up getting COVID-19 and it was scary after spending so much time focused on its impacts and on trying not to contract it. I am full of gratitude that I survived, grief for people we have lost through this, and empathy for the many who have suffered through this — there are all sorts of mixed emotions.

One thing I’ve found comforting throughout has been our urban wildlife — seeing signs of spring, birds beginning to nest feels hopeful. I have found being out in nature to be an important outlet during the pandemic and when I was sick in bed, hearing the birds was comforting, knowing those signs of life were continuing.

As far as telecommuting policies and practices, through this unplanned experiment we’ve seen that people who aren’t required to be on site to do their work can be really productive and do a lot better in the remote environment. A lot of employees will likely continue some level of remote work and that can have an impact on health and well-being and also on sustainability. Many employees used to commute many hours a day, and the remote work can reduce emissions in addition to giving them more time to be with their families.

Top UCLA News

UCLA transit pass programs improved accessibility and reduced emissions in 2023

U7+ Alliance of World Universities urge G7 to increase access to higher education

Historic gift to UCLA School of Law advances Latino legal scholarship

UCLA Downtown springs to life as 31 community-focused programs prepare to move in

Stay connected.

Get top research & news headlines four days a week.

(Check your inbox or spam filter for confirmation.)

Subscribe to a UCLA Newsroom RSS feed and our story headlines will be automatically delivered to your news reader.

• UCLA on Twitter
• UCLA on Facebook
• UCLA on LinkedIn
• @UCLA on Instagram
• UCLA on YouTube

• Newsletters

Site search

• Israel-Hamas war
• Home Planet
• 2024 election
• Supreme Court
• All explainers
• Future Perfect

Filed under:

Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

Will you support Vox today?

We believe that everyone deserves to understand the world that they live in. That kind of knowledge helps create better citizens, neighbors, friends, parents, and stewards of this planet. Producing deeply researched, explanatory journalism takes resources. You can support this mission by making a financial gift to Vox today. Will you join us?

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

Next Up In Culture

Sign up for the newsletter today, explained.

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

Thanks for signing up!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

The US paused a weapons shipment to Israel. Is it a real shift in policy?

“Climate-friendly” beef could land in a meat aisle near you. Don’t fall for it.

Drake and Kendrick Lamar don’t care about misogyny

Eurovision is supposed to be fun and silly. This year is different.

Eurovision says it’s “apolitical.” History says otherwise.

Israel and Hamas aren’t that far apart in ceasefire talks

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Redefining Your Purpose in the Wake of the Pandemic

• John Coleman

A lot has changed — including you.

For many of us, the pandemic changed our purpose. It’s time to embrace this period of transition and reimagine both your personal life and your work. In this journey of self-reflection, first, identify what’s permanent — those sources of meaning that will never change, whether it’s being a parent or the urge to work in health care. Next, reject stagnation. Identify areas where you feel stuck, and find ways that you can change them or let them go. Finally, embrace others. Reach out to others in transition and support each other as you navigate this new phase of life and experience these shifts in purpose together.

What happened to you these last two years? Did you lose a job, or quit one ? Did you relocate, opting to work remotely from a new place or to be closer to family? Did you see what life would be like spending more time (or less) with friends and family? Did you get seriously ill or lose a loved one?

• JC John Coleman is the author of the HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose . Subscribe to his free newsletter, On Purpose , follow him on Twitter @johnwcoleman, or contact him at johnwilliamcoleman.com.

Partner Center

COVID-19 reflections: the lessons learnt from the pandemic

by Alana Cullen , Lucy Lipscombe 03 February 2021

Imperial researchers reflect on the lessons they will take away from the pandemic.

Over the past 12 months the Imperial College London community has devoted an intense amount of time and research to COVID-19. Members of the community have been making fundamental scientific contributions to respond to coronavirus , from advising government policy to critical therapy research. A year on, Imperial researchers reflect on what lasting impact the pandemic has left on them. 

Watch the clip above to hear the researchers’ insights. 

A global contributor

Before I felt like just a person in the world, and now I feel like I’m one of those important people in the world! Dr Kai Hu

The first lesson is how fast- moving science is at this time. It is exciting to have been “on the forefront of vaccine discoveries” said Dr Anna Blakney, Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, formally a Research Fellow in Imperial’s Department of Infection and Immunity . Imperial has also been key in finding optimal treatments for COVID-19, with clinical academics such as Anthony Gordon , Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care and Intensive Care consultant, caring for critically ill patients in intensive care units as well as leading clinical trials. Findings from these trials include the effective use of an arthritis drug in reducing mortality in COVID-19 patients.

The science doesn’t stop there. Outside of the lab Imperial academics have been informing UK government policy. Since the emergence of coronavirus the team from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and Jameel Institute (J-IDEA) at Imperial have been predicting the course of the pandemic and informing policy. The team have also been supporting the COVID-19 response in New York State. Furthermore, Imperial academics including Professor Charles Bangham and Professor Wendy Barclay continue to advise the government as part of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). 

In total the Imperial community has contributed nearly 2,000 key workers to essential services and research, from biomedical engineers developing rapid COVID-19 tests to health economists, generating a wealth of knowledge about the science behind the pandemic.

“This is the first time where I feel like what I have learnt is very useful” said Dr Kai Hu, Research Associate in the Department of Infectious Disease. “Before I felt like just a person in the world, and now I feel like I’m one of those important people in the world.” Dr Kai Hu is part of Professor Robin Shattock’s COVID-19 vaccine team, who continue to develop an RNA vaccine .

Watch our full COVID reflections video below, including researchers sharing their hopes for the future.

Collaboration is key

Another key lesson learnt is how much stronger we are when we work together. Vaccine development, production and delivery have all been achieved in under 12 months – an unprecedented timeframe for any disease prevention tool. This goes to show that collaborative efforts with the  right funding will go a long way in biomedical science. “I can work even harder than I thought I could work because we can come together as a team” says Dr Paul McKay , Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Infectious Disease. “Science is a competitive endeavour, but a collaborative endeavour too.” 

Something that will leave a lasting impression is the kindness of community, family and friends. Kindness at this time has been “unparalleled” said Sonia Saxena , Professor of Primary Care and General Practitioner. From providing free meals to NHS workers to educational materials for homeschooling there has been a feeling of togetherness, even when apart, throughout these difficult times. Going forward, we can bring these lessons into science, bringing more collaboration and kindness into the everyday. 

Article text (excluding photos or graphics) © Imperial College London.

Photos and graphics subject to third party copyright used with permission or © Imperial College London.

Alana Cullen Communications Division

Contact details

Email: [email protected] Show all stories by this author

Lucy Lipscombe Communications Division

Strategy-staff-community , Vaccines , Infectious-diseases , Viruses , JIDEA , Coronavirus , Staff-development , COVIDWEF , Public-health See more tags

Leave a comment

Your comment may be published, displaying your name as you provide it, unless you request otherwise. Your contact details will never be published.

Latest news

Flight100 results

First transatlantic sustainable aviation fuel flight 'saved 95 tonnes of co2', med tech investments, medical technology seed fund helps four startups on their way to success, students enjoy graduation, thousands of imperial students celebrate graduation day 2024, most popular.

1 Improving cardiac imaging:

Microscopic heart vessels imaged in super-resolution for first time at imperial, 2 infection study:, covid-19 – how long am i infectious and when can i safely leave isolation, 3 psychedelic treatment:, magic mushroom compound increases brain connectivity in people with depression, 4 students enjoy graduation:, latest comments, comment on explore the environment in your area with interactive citizen science map: ** note: while the opal survey has now ended, if you want to report nz flatworm sightings, you can d…, comment on explore the environment in your area with interactive citizen science map: i assume the research into new zealand flatworms has finished if not i have quite a few in my garde…, comment on crucial connection for ‘quantum internet’ made for the first time: this is a wonderful development i would love to see as a next step, molecular-level storage devices…, latest tweets.

• Our Mission
• Strategic Plan
• Institute History
• Annual Reviews
• Keeping Up With Kellogg ENews
• Kellogg 40th Anniversary
• Staff by Name
• Staff by Area

• Human Development
• The Ford Program
• K-12 Resources
• Ford Family Notre Dame Award
• Outstanding Doctoral Student Contributions
• Distinguished Dissertation on Democracy and Human Development
• Undergraduate Mentoring Award
• Considine Award
• Bartell Prize for Undergraduate Research
• The Notre Dame Prize
• Employment Opportunities

The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of the University of Notre Dame’s new Keough School of Global Affairs, is an interdisciplinary community of scholars that promotes research, provides educational opportunities, and builds linkages related to democracy and human development.

Our welcoming intellectual community helps foster relationships among faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and visitors that promote scholarly conversation, further research ideas and insights, and build connections that are often sustained beyond Notre Dame. 

• Kellogg Faculty
• Visiting Fellows
• Distinguished Research Affiliates
• Advisory Board
• Graduate Students
• Undergraduate Students
• Faculty Committee
• Institute Staff
• Engage with Alumni
• International Scholars

A map of the involvement of Kellogg Institute people and programs in countries around the world.

• Democracy Initiative
• Policy and Practice Labs
• Research Clusters
• Varieties of Democracy Project
• Kellogg Institute Book Series
• Kellogg Institute Working Papers
• Conference Publications
• Faculty Research Highlights
• Kellogg Funded Faculty Research
• Visiting Fellow Research
• Visiting Fellows News and Spotlights
• Work in Progress Series
• Working Groups
• Kellogg Funded Doctoral Research
• Doctoral Research Highlights
• Graduate Student News
• Comparative Politics Workshop
• Kellogg Int'l Scholars Program
• Int'l Development Studies Minor
• Kellogg/Kroc Research Grants
• Experiencing the World Fellowships

KELLOGG COMMONS The Commons is flexible space in the Hesburgh Center for our Kellogg community to study and gather in an informal setting.  Open M-F, 8am to midnight. To reserve meeting rooms or for more info: 574.631.3434.

• Faculty Grant Opportunities
• Working Paper Series
• Kellogg Event Proposal Form
• Visiting Fellowships
• Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowships
• Fulbright Chair
• Other Visitor Opportunities
• Doctoral Student Affiliates
• PhD Fellowships
• Dissertation Year Fellowship
• Summer Dissertation Fellowship
• Graduate Research Grants
• Professionalization Grants
• Conference Travel Grants
• Overview Page
• Kellogg Developing Researchers Program
• Human Development Conference
• Pre-Experiencing the World Fellowship Program
• Organizations
• Kellogg/Kroc Undergraduate Research Grants
• Postgraduate Opportunities

News & Features Learn what exciting developments are happening at the Kellogg Institute. Check our latest news often to see interesting updates and stories as they develop.

Global Stage Podcasts

No matter the hour, across my window, I see a group of military soldiers outside. It has become a morning routine to stand there, coffee in hand, and read the forever-changing news to which I’ve become addicted to. Today, as I read government instructions forbidding burials and limiting funerals to only close family members, I cannot help but think about when my father passed away. He spent a few days in intensive care, and we were able to mourn him, give him a proper funeral, and choose when and how to continue with our lives as best as we could… and it was the hardest and most painful thing I’ve ever done. I cannot imagine the feeling of those being directly affected by COVID-19 and not only its consequences (as this part has already become universal). More...

Follow up on COVID-19 in Bolivia: A Small Fraction of The Struggle - September 16, 2020   Four months after schools moved to remote learning, on July 9th, the Minister of Education finally presented rules for online instruction, as the government continued with ongoing programs to train teachers and improve access to and quality of the internet. However, on the morning of Sunday August 2nd, the Minister of the Presidency announced the closure of the school year as of July 31st—four months earlier than usual. All students from all levels automatically passed. The government would continue to pay public schools teachers, and private schools could decide whether or not parents wanted to continue online instruction. No one saw this coming, especially not me.  More...

As of yesterday, April 4th, the official count is that there are 1,890 confirmed cases, 634 recoveries, and 79 deaths in Mexico. The real number, however, is likely to be much bigger because my country lacks the resources to detect the virus and keep track of the cases. Like the rest of the world, thousands, if not millions, are being affected by this crisis. The totality of the trickle-down effects of COVID-19 is yet to be seen, but thousands of workers have lost their jobs or part of their wages. Government authorities have failed to impose strict measures to control the virus, and many have condemned our president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), for it. In his daily press briefings, he has encouraged hugging, blamed conservatives for purposely wanting our economy to fail, and claimed that we are ready to confront the crisis. The reality is much different. More...

In early February, during one of my Political Science classes, my professor asked the class to go around the room and share its thoughts on COVID-19. When my turn to share came, I answered honestly that I am concerned about the Sub-Saharan African region should the virus spread across the world. The reason behind my deep concern was because the region does not have the same level of health care facilities and resources as western countries and so the spread of the virus could be fatal. I was particularly concerned about my country, Botswana, because it is among the countries that have the highest rates of HIV/AIDS prevalence in the World. From what I had read at the time, people with underlying medical conditions were at a higher risk of getting seriously ill if they get the virus. More...

Facing the threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic is not easy, nor is it easy to conduct a general election – especially a free and fair one in an underdeveloped country. How about doing both simultaneously? The Dominican Republic is currently undergoing this challenge, with elections scheduled for July 5. The coronavirus pandemic was declared a national emergency on March 19. There are currently 16,531 active cases in the country, 9,266 recovered ones, and 488 deaths. Fortunately, our health system has not collapsed – yet, and there seems to be moderate control over the virus’s transmission rate compared to other countries in the region, such as Ecuador. Nonetheless, as the country comes close to holding general elections, the feasibility of doing so while still respecting the well-being of all Dominican citizens is in question. More...

I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• How Far Trump Would Go
• Why Maternity Care Is Underpaid
• Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
• Saving Seconds Is Better Than Hours
• Why Your Breakfast Should Start with a Vegetable
• Welcome to the Golden Age of Ryan Gosling
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

• Share article

In this video, Navajo student Miles Johnson shares how he experienced the stress and anxiety of schools shutting down last year. Miles’ teacher shared his experience and those of her other students in a recent piece for Education Week. In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan’s 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been slightly edited for clarity. Read Grogan’s essay .

“Hours Staring at Tiny Boxes on the Screen”

By Kimberly Polacco, 16

I stare at my blank computer screen, trying to find the motivation to turn it on, but my finger flinches every time it hovers near the button. I instead open my curtains. It is raining outside, but it does not matter, I will not be going out there for the rest of the day. The sound of pounding raindrops contributes to my headache enough to make me turn on my computer in hopes that it will give me something to drown out the noise. But as soon as I open it up, I feel the weight of the world crash upon my shoulders.

Each 42-minute period drags on by. I spend hours upon hours staring at tiny boxes on a screen, one of which my exhausted face occupies, and attempt to retain concepts that have been presented to me through this device. By the time I have the freedom of pressing the “leave” button on my last Google Meet of the day, my eyes are heavy and my legs feel like mush from having not left my bed since I woke up.

Tomorrow arrives, except this time here I am inside of a school building, interacting with my first period teacher face to face. We talk about our favorite movies and TV shows to stream as other kids pile into the classroom. With each passing period I accumulate more and more of these tiny meaningless conversations everywhere I go with both teachers and students. They may not seem like much, but to me they are everything because I know that the next time I am expected to report to school, I will be trapped in the bubble of my room counting down the hours until I can sit down in my freshly sanitized wooden desk again.

“My Only Parent Essentially on Her Death Bed”

By Nick Ingargiola, 16

My mom had COVID-19 for ten weeks. She got sick during the first month school buildings were shut. The difficulty of navigating an online classroom was already overwhelming, and when mixed with my only parent essentially on her death bed, it made it unbearable. Focusing on schoolwork was impossible, and watching my mother struggle to lift up her arm broke my heart.

My mom has been through her fair share of diseases from pancreatic cancer to seizures and even as far as a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. It is safe to say she has been through a lot. The craziest part is you would never know it. She is the strongest and most positive person I’ve ever met. COVID hit her hard. Although I have watched her go through life and death multiple times, I have never seen her so physically and mentally drained.

I initially was overjoyed to complete my school year in the comfort of my own home, but once my mom got sick, I couldn’t handle it. No one knows what it’s like to pretend like everything is OK until they are forced to. I would wake up at 8 after staying up until 5 in the morning pondering the possibility of losing my mother. She was all I had. I was forced to turn my camera on and float in the fake reality of being fine although I wasn’t. The teachers tried to keep the class engaged by obligating the students to participate. This was dreadful. I didn’t want to talk. I had to hide the distress in my voice. If only the teachers understood what I was going through. I was hesitant because I didn’t want everyone to know that the virus that was infecting and killing millions was knocking on my front door.

After my online classes, I was required to finish an immense amount of homework while simultaneously hiding my sadness so that my mom wouldn’t worry about me. She was already going through a lot. There was no reason to add me to her list of worries. I wasn’t even able to give her a hug. All I could do was watch.

“The Way of Staying Sane”

By Lynda Feustel, 16

Entering year two of the pandemic is strange. It barely seems a day since last March, but it also seems like a lifetime. As an only child and introvert, shutting down my world was initially simple and relatively easy. My friends and I had been super busy with the school play, and while I was sad about it being canceled, I was struggling a lot during that show and desperately needed some time off.

As March turned to April, virtual school began, and being alone really set in. I missed my friends and us being together. The isolation felt real with just my parents and me, even as we spent time together. My friends and I began meeting on Facetime every night to watch TV and just be together in some way. We laughed at insane jokes we made and had homework and therapy sessions over Facetime and grew closer through digital and literal walls.

The summer passed with in-person events together, and the virus faded into the background for a little while. We went to the track and the beach and hung out in people’s backyards.

Then school came for us in a more nasty way than usual. In hybrid school we were separated. People had jobs, sports, activities, and quarantines. Teachers piled on work, and the virus grew more present again. The group text put out hundreds of messages a day while the Facetimes came to a grinding halt, and meeting in person as a group became more of a rarity. Being together on video and in person was the way of staying sane.

In a way I am in a similar place to last year, working and looking for some change as we enter the second year of this mess.

“In History Class, Reports of Heightening Cases”

By Vivian Rose, 16

I remember the moment my freshman year English teacher told me about the young writers’ conference at Bread Loaf during my sophomore year. At first, I didn’t want to apply, the deadline had passed, but for some strange reason, the directors of the program extended it another week. It felt like it was meant to be. It was in Vermont in the last week of May when the flowers have awakened and the sun is warm.

I submitted my work, and two weeks later I got an email of my acceptance. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the empty house; everyone was out, so I was left alone to celebrate my small victory. It was rare for them to admit sophomores. Usually they accept submissions only from juniors and seniors.

That was the first week of February 2020. All of a sudden, there was some talk about this strange virus coming from China. We thought nothing of it. Every night, I would fall asleep smiling, knowing that I would be able to go to the exact conference that Robert Frost attended for 42 years.

Then, as if overnight, it seemed the virus had swung its hand and had gripped parts of the country. Every newscast was about the disease. Every day in history, we would look at the reports of heightening cases and joke around that this could never become a threat as big as Dr. Fauci was proposing. Then, March 13th came around--it was the last day before the world seemed to shut down. Just like that, Bread Loaf would vanish from my grasp.

“One Day Every Day Won’t Be As Terrible”

By Nick Wollweber, 17

COVID created personal problems for everyone, some more serious than others, but everyone had a struggle.

As the COVID lock-down took hold, the main thing weighing on my mind was my oldest brother, Joe, who passed away in January 2019 unexpectedly in his sleep. Losing my brother was a complete gut punch and reality check for me at 14 and 15 years old. 2019 was a year of struggle, darkness, sadness, frustration. I didn’t want to learn after my brother had passed, but I had to in order to move forward and find my new normal.

Routine and always having things to do and places to go is what let me cope in the year after Joe died. Then COVID came and gave me the option to let up and let down my guard. I struggled with not wanting to take care of personal hygiene. That was the beginning of an underlying mental problem where I wouldn’t do things that were necessary for everyday life.

My “coping routine” that got me through every day and week the year before was gone. COVID wasn’t beneficial to me, but it did bring out the true nature of my mental struggles and put a name to it. Since COVID, I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I began taking antidepressants and going to therapy a lot more.

COVID made me realize that I’m not happy with who I am and that I needed to change. I’m still not happy with who I am. I struggle every day, but I am working towards a goal that one day every day won’t be as terrible.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

Sign Up for The Savvy Principal

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

A year later: Reflections on learning, adapting, and scaling education interventions during COVID-19

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, tendekai mukoyi , tendekai mukoyi education program coordinator - youth impact molly curtiss wyss , and molly curtiss wyss senior project manager and senior research analyst - global economy and development , center for universal education jenny perlman robinson jenny perlman robinson nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @jennyperlman.

April 2, 2021

Already more than a full year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it is sobering to reflect on the ongoing responses to the global pandemic, as well as future disruptions to children’s learning. The past year has really put to the test scaling principles and elucidated important lessons about catalyzing and sustaining transformative change in rapidly evolving contexts. Many of these principles—such as adaptive learning and systems thinking—are being unpacked and explored in Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSL), a collaboration with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings and local institutions and governments around the world to learn from, document, and support education initiatives in the process of scaling.

In Botswana, Young 1ove and CUE have been partnering on an RTSL convened by the Ministry of Basic Education (MoBE) focused on scaling Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL). The experience of the Botswana scaling lab over the past year offers several important insights and reflections that may be useful more broadly for those working to affect large-scale improvements in children’s learning, particularly in low-resource environments.

Insight 1 : National scale can be pursued from the top down and bottom up

Expanding and deepening the impact of an education intervention requires nurturing partnerships from grassroots to national levels, with the understanding that buy-in and ownership for scale needs to involve players at all levels. Young 1ove has been collaborating closely with the MoBE at the central offices to support progress toward the ultimate goal of infusing TaRL into daily teaching practices in all primary school classrooms in Botswana. However, the past year has revealed significant potential for scaling via regional pathways, as many stakeholders at the highest levels of government have been consumed by national responses to COVID-19-related school closures and health crises.

For example, MoBE partners in the North East region took the lead in reinstating TaRL as schools reopened by mobilizing teachers and school-based youth volunteers to restart the program even amid shorter shift-system school days (where students attend classes in shift for half the day rather than for the full day). North East regional leaders also adapted TaRL delivery in response to COVID-19, including creating safety protocols that adhere to COVID-19 health protocols and taking full ownership of TaRL data collection and submission by utilizing existing school-based tablets. Student learning results from the region show a 79 percent decline in innumeracy, a near doubling of students who could perform all mathematical operations, and 57 percent of students learning a new operation, further evidencing how strong regional leadership can catalyze change that directly impacts children’s learning.

The success in North East illustrates how scale-up efforts can be made more powerful and sustainable when led by regional directors in the MoBE. The partnership between Young 1ove and the MoBE jointly supporting TaRL implementation prior to COVID-19 likely facilitated this approach, as regional stakeholders already had the tools and knowledge in place to take TaRL implementation and run with it.

Insight 2: Local champions leading the charge on the ground can be particularly important, even in a virtual world

Key to a regional scaling approach has been the role of a supportive and enthusiastic MOBE regional director. Young 1ove already knew that changemakers in bureaucracy are central to the scaling process, but this has proven especially true at the regional level, where an engaged director who champions TaRL can make significant progress in advancing and prioritizing TaRL within the region.

Further, Young 1ove has found that embedding a staff member in the regional government has been a particularly powerful scaling asset. Even as the world has shifted to virtual meetings and phone calls, having someone from Young 1ove physically present has helped the organization remain actively involved in and aware of conversations and schooling decisions. Moreover, the integration of this staff member in the regional government supports the shift to seeing TaRL as a sustainable government program led by strong regional champions. In regions where they do not have a staff member embedded, Young 1ove has found lapsed communication over the past year and faced more challenges “restarting” TaRL after COVID-19 school closures.

Insight 3 : Short-term shocks can lead to long-term learnings

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the absolute need to be flexible, adaptive, and responsive to changes in the education landscape in real-time. This experience has also underscored the importance of evidence and learning alongside adaptation and rapid response.

The TaRL implementation cycle in Botswana is typically designed to last 30 days. However, as a result of COVID-19, the implementation period was cut by over half during the first term of the 2020 school year with an average implementation period of eight days across schools. To understand the impact of this significant shift, Young 1ove collected data on student learning outcomes and discovered that despite the reduced intervention time, students demonstrated strong learning gains—almost equal to previous 30-day cycles as shown in Figure 1.

This finding not only suggests that even relatively short periods of high-quality implementation can improve student learning, but also underscores the importance of tracking results—even during unexpected adaptations. In this case, tight feedback loops provided evidence of possibilities for refining the TaRL model beyond this pandemic in ways that maximize effectiveness and scalability.

Learnings for beyond the pandemic

The RTSL experience adapting and scaling TaRL in Botswana in the midst of a global pandemic offers key insights that are applicable well beyond this immediate pandemic:

• An orientation toward rapid learning and evidence generation is key to maintain alongside innovation and adaptation, especially in a crisis like COVID-19. Balancing the need for adjustments and iteration with the collection and use of timely data and learning can help respond to disruptions of scaling efforts.
• Focusing on regional/grassroots partnerships for scaling can be particularly effective as those closest to the problems are most often best placed—and have the most incentive—to respond. Even where the ultimate goal is national scaling or ownership of the initiative by the central government, a more decentralized approach to scaling can be an effective way to make progress toward this goal, especially when national-level actors are consumed by crisis-response.
• And, finally, even in a more virtual world, regional and local champions present on the ground are important for maintaining scaling momentum and expanding impact.

Photo credit: Thimonyo Karunga, Northeast Sub-Regional Coordinator at Young 1ove

Related Content

Gabby Arenge, Jenny Perlman Robinson

October 31, 2019

Rebecca Winthrop, Mahsa Ershadi, Noam Angrist, Efua Bortsie, Moitshepi Matsheng

November 2, 2020

Jenny Perlman Robinson, Molly Curtiss Wyss, Patrick Hannahan

June 24, 2020

Global Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Millions Learning

Thinley Choden

May 3, 2024

Ghulam Omar Qargha, Rachel Dyl, Sreehari Ravindranath, Nariman Moustafa, Erika Faz de la Paz

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Rebecca Winthrop, Sweta Shah

May 2, 2024

COVID-19 and How It’s Changed Nursing: A Two Year Reflection

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Megan Champion, FNP, cares for patients as a family nurse practitioner in a community health clinic and at the bedside as an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse. She sees how the pandemic has imposed disparity and devastation in underserved communities in the clinic. In the ICU, she grapples with death and disease head-on, the strain amplified by staffing shortages and burnout.

Looking back at the last two years, any nurse may ask: How could we have prepared for this?

Even with 10 years of ICU nursing experience, “nothing could have prepared me, or anyone, for a global pandemic,” Champion says.

She shares the lessons she’s learned during this time — and the reality of what it means to be part of this first generation of nurses who have worked through the unprecedented times of a global pandemic.

Along with Champion, we spoke with a seasoned charge nurse nearing the end of her career and a new nursing school graduate who’s known nothing but working in a pandemic.

These are their stories.

An Inside Look: Nursing During Unprecedented Times

At this point in the pandemic, it seems like the public has a general understanding of what nurses do. Whether it’s from personal connections or the media, the sacrifices of nurses have not gone unnoticed.

Eve Hinds, RN, MBA, is a charge nurse with 20 years of experience in inpatient and outpatient settings, including critical care and surgical nursing . She says the praise she receives in the community makes her feel appreciated and respected.

“Back in 2003 or 2004, no one really cared if I was a nurse. It was just a job. I was just a nurse,” she says. “But after the pandemic, you state your profession, and a lot of eyes open wide.”

While images in the media depict hospital staff in gowns and masks caring for patients in emergency scenarios, Champion shares a less dramatic but equally painful side of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the community health clinic, her patients suffer the disproportionate impacts of the disease on all aspects of their well-being. Once the lockdown started, Champion’s working-class patients did not have the option to stay home from work, and many became sick with COVID-19 or worse.

“Our patients truly suffered not just the loss of life,” she says, “but also loss of housing, loss of financial security, food insecurity, domestic violence, increased substance use, and all the ripple effects this pandemic has put in motion.”

Beyond sickness, Champion also witnessed families suffering the loss of a parent and financial breadwinners when former President Donald Trump’s Zero Tolerance program removed parents and guardians from their homes.

With the increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at-risk communities were torn apart from political impositions on top of disease and financial loss.

“Add heartbreak, desperation, and loss of financial stability to a pandemic, and you can see it has been a nightmare for our patients,” Champion says.

Popular Online RN-to-BSN Programs

Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.

How the Pandemic Has Shaped What It Means to Be a Nurse

Every nurse has been impacted differently by the pandemic, and their views on healthcare will forever be changed.

After graduating nursing school, Maggie Ortiz began her first nursing role on a medical-surgical nephrology floor in February 2020. For Ortiz, a passion for nursing keeps her showing up for her patients, and it has even earned her the prestigious DAISY Award.

Oritz’s perspective on healthcare has not changed much because working in a pandemic is her baseline. She can’t recall a time before COVID-19 flowsheets were integrated into Epic, their healthcare management system — this is all she knows.

But many nurses can’t help but notice the effects of politics getting involved in healthcare. Champion mentions feeling shocked by how heavily politics have influenced the science of healthcare.

“It is unnerving to see the effects different presidential administrations have had on something that should be based on science and fact,” she says.

Additionally for Champion, her role as a patient advocate is more important than ever. She’s gone beyond providing just bedside care to her patients. Through the call center at her clinic, she provides not just medical advice but screening and support for depression, anxiety, domestic violence, and food security.

“We were able to connect folks with resources to help with childcare, housing, and hunger,” Champion says.

Limitations, Appreciation, and a Call to Action

As nurses’ perceptions of healthcare have changed in the last two years, so have their expectations for themselves.

Ortiz says working during the pandemic shaped her expectations in how she relates to others. She says that as a nurse, it’s her duty to protect others in the hospital and the community, whether that means getting vaccinated or staying home when she is feeling sick.

Hinds says her commitment to nursing is as simple as showing up for work. She’s grateful to hear kind words or recognition like “thank you for your service” and “we appreciate your commitment.”

Hinds is just as needed today as she was at the beginning of the pandemic. As more nurses leave the bedside in 2022, nursing shortages are a major concern for the future of healthcare.

Champion says in the ICU, staffing shortages have put nurses in positions where they cannot give the quality care they want to provide.

“Patients waiting to be cleaned up, call lights going unanswered — these are all routine now where they never were before,” Champion says. “All our energy goes toward putting out emergencies and making sure people don’t die.”

Poor staffing ratios have been a major pain point for hospitals across the nation, putting nurses and patients in compromised and unsafe situations. Many nurses have grown frustrated that the care they want to provide doesn’t match the conditions they are placed in.

Champion says the ICU environment is distressing to the patients and families, but it also affects nurses.

“I know that in my unit, we are all distressed at having to compromise our care,” she says.

Nurses Are More Than ‘Healthcare Heroes’

While public support for nurses during the pandemic is encouraging, using language like “healthcare heroes” can have heavy implications. The saying indicates that nurses can stretch themselves beyond human capacity, a notion that is being tested in the current healthcare climate.

With increasing staffing shortages, nurses are expected to care for more patients than the typical workload. A strenuous patient assignment is about more than numbers; most of these patients are high acuity, needing intense nursing care and close monitoring. When a patient dies, nurses are expected to take another patient right away, having no time to process death.

“There is a stigma that nurses and healthcare providers are heroes, underdogs, and great sympathizers with endless sources of compassion,” Champion says. “We are not heroes; we are human. We are not robots; we are tired. We are capable of being frustrated, angry, and outraged.”

In addition to strenuous workloads, nurses carry the brunt of patients’ frustrations, and in turn nursing workplace violence has increased.

“Many people have shown huge amounts of gratitude for healthcare workers during this time,” Champion says. “However, just as many have shown disregard and tremendous disrespect to healthcare workers through their actions and choices. It hurts every time.”

Ortiz wishes more people recognized the importance of prioritizing nurses’ well-being to care for others. More and more nurses are getting sick and burned out because they are not allowed the resources to take care of their own health, Oritz says.

It can be difficult for nurses to take days off when their unit is already short-staffed, but mounting pressure can lead to increased nurse burnout. Ortiz wants the public to know: “Nurses need to protect themselves so they can protect you.”

How to Prepare Incoming Nurses and Nursing Students

Nursing students and new graduates are preparing to enter the workforce; navigating the pandemic is an inevitable challenge. Many nursing schools have adopted virtual learning in the nursing classroom and clinical settings, but some nurses worry nursing students are missing valuable patient experiences.

As nursing schools adapt to the pandemic’s new normal, Ortiz says educators should prioritize in-person clinical learning. Nursing students should be taught:

• How to don and doff personal protective equipment
• What new medications are out there now
• The signs and symptoms of COVID-19

She notes that policies and protocols in hospitals are constantly changing, and experiencing these changes firsthand is a way for nursing students to learn.

Not only has healthcare changed in the past two years regarding the diseases and conditions nurses are treating, but there’s been a change in the way nurses care for patients.

“There is more to this job than simply medicine,” Hinds reminds nursing students.”We have to be able to care for our patients’ and their families’ emotional needs as well.”

Remembering Why We Are Nurses

There is no denying that nursing has changed in the last two years and that healthcare will face many challenges in the years to come. However, one thing will always remain the same: Nursing is a profession founded on passion, care, and love for the human experience.

As we work together through this new normal, nurses need to support each other by:

• Making nurses’ mental health a priority
• Getting educated
• Getting vaccinated
• Understanding that this pandemic affects everyone differently

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the three nurses share stories that remind us why this profession is so special. As a charge nurse, Hinds says her role is to educate and support patients and their family members, which is especially challenging with visitor restrictions.

“I’d have patients in the hospital dying and their family members were not allowed to be in the room with them,” Hinds says. “I did, and still do, the best I can to love on the patients, support them, and help them to go home.”

Reflecting on her experiences in the community health clinic, Champion feels touched as many patients return wearing masks or t-shirts dedicated to their family members who died of COVID-19.

“This was terribly poignant,” she says. “Seeing families with the names and images of their loved ones brandished on their faces and chests was a humble and powerful reminder that this pandemic is real, and the loss is personal.”

With Oritz’s entire nursing experience defined by the pandemic, she finds comfort in the ways she’s able to connect with her patients. In one specific instance, she recalls a patient she took care of whose family couldn’t visit, so she updated them by phone each day.

She was touched when the family called months later to let her know their mother passed. They took the time to thank Ortiz for making their mom comfortable at a time they couldn’t be there with her.

“It makes me happy to know I made an impact on this patient and their family because in my eyes, I was just doing what I was called to do, and that is nursing,” Oritz says.

Meet Our Contributors

Eve Hinds, RN, MBA

Eve Hinds is a charge nurse well versed in providing care for patients in an outpatient or inpatient setting. She has a strong healthcare service knowledge with a master of business administration focused in healthcare. Hinds is skilled in critical care, performance improvement, and project management.

Megan Champion, FNP

Megan Champion is a certified family nurse practitioner. She has been working at the Community Health Clinic at Sheridan Health Services since 2018. Champion graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Nursing with a bachelor of science in nursing and minor in Spanish. Champion then graduated from the University of Colorado (CU) Denver College of Nursing in 2015 with a master of science in the family nurse practitioner program. In addition to being a primary care provider, Champion is the clinical director of primary care and pediatrics at CU Sheridan Health Services.

Maggie Ortiz, RN

Maggie Ortiz is a nurse, wife, and dog mom. She lives in Northwest Indiana and has a love for travel, especially anywhere there is a palm tree and an ocean view. Although she has been a nurse for a short time, she feels like this is what she is meant to do. In just under a year she received the prestigious DAISY award for her patient care and wears that honor proudly with her DAISY pin. She now works in the operating room as a circulating nurse where she can continue her passion and nursing journey.